


Grape Soda

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Jealousy, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 23:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10932453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Ginny invites the team over to watch a basketball game. Mike tolerates certain Padres' interest in his pitcher poorly.





	Grape Soda

**Author's Note:**

> I passed 250,000 hits on AO3 this morning, which boggles my mind. Thanks to everyone who's read over the last three years and especially those who keep me writing by commenting.

“Well, she did it,” Blip observed.

“Did what?” Mike locked the front door and turned back to his friend.

“She’s just one of the guys.” Blip gestured toward Ginny’s living room, where more than half the team was crammed onto her couches and chairs or sprawled on her floor. She was standing in the middle of it all, pizza boxes flipped open on the coffee table in front of her, passing out slices to her teammates.

“Not to Omar,” Mike noted, watching the way the in-fielder tracked Ginny’s movements from his spot on the floor. Robles still looked like a puppy begging to be petted every time Ginny was around. 

“He’s harmless,” Blip said with a shrug. 

That was probably true. If Robles was going to make a move, he would have done it by now. When he’d arrived tonight, holding a six-pack of grape soda in glass bottles, Ginny had actually squealed and hugged him. Mike still gritted his teeth thinking of her exclaiming, “This is my favorite!” and giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek. Robles had turned six shades of red when she’d added, “That makes you my favorite tonight.” 

There hadn’t been an ounce of flirtation in her voice, but it still chapped Mike’s ass. He was the one who’d told Omar that Ginny liked grape soda, damn it. Yet Robles had lapped up her attention and not said a word. “Yeah, well, if he doesn’t stop drooling all over her, I’m gonna have to smack him upside the head, teach him some manners,” Mike grumbled.

She did look good tonight, not like she was trying or anything. Her hair was in pigtails, her coltish legs on display in running shorts, a tight NC State t-shirt stretched across her breasts. The pizza guy, who hadn’t looked a day over 19, had practically swallowed his tongue when she opened the door. 

“Who ordered anchovies?” Ginny asked with a grimace. 

Omar raised a sheepish hand.

Ginny clicked her tongue. “Ooh, party foul. You’re not my favorite anymore.” But she still dished up a couple of slices for him, and laughingly scolded a pair of relievers who asked for slices too. 

Something was different about her tonight. Oh sure, she was comfortable around the guys now, and happy to be back in the lineup after an offseason rehabbing her elbow, but this was the first time she’d ever hosted a team event. Ginny had been disappointed to realize that they were leaving Arizona only a couple of days before Phoenix hosted the men’s Final Four. As a North Carolina girl, college basketball had been an inescapable part of her childhood. Her dad’s team was NC State, she’d gotten a scholarship from NC State. According to her, that meant rooting against North Carolina, Duke, and Wake Forest in all things. 

Instead of complaining that their opening home series kept her from staying in Phoenix to watch the games and root for everyone but Carolina, she’d invited the team over to her new condo to watch the national championship game after their afternoon game against the Reds. The timing couldn’t be better. They needed some team bonding after a series of errors in the seventh had cost them the game.

Ginny finished handing out the pizza and maneuvered her way carefully out of the crush of her teammates to bring Mike a plate. She hadn’t asked what he wanted, but had loaded up his plate with exactly what he would have requested anyway.

“None for me?” Blip complained.

Ginny shrugged and pushed past them to the fridge. “You didn’t pay for the pizzas.”

“That’s because I’ve got a wife spending money like it’s water,” Blip grumbled, but his words didn’t have their old bite. He and Evelyn had worked through their issues in therapy the previous fall, which Blip had hated, but it was far better than the alternative.  

Still grumbling to himself, Blip took advantage of her absence to commandeer a spot on the couch between Dusty and Javanes, leaving Mike leaning against the kitchen island. 

Ginny set a fresh beer beside his plate and bumped his shoulder with hers. She had another bottle of grape soda in her hand and took a long pull from it. “Thanks for dinner, by the way. You didn’t have to pay.”

“No problem. This was a good idea.” Ginny had glared at him briefly across the room when she realized he’d gotten his wallet out while she set the stack of pizzas on the coffee table, but at least she wasn’t trying to pay him back. She had her Nike money, but he was the captain. He could and should cover this. 

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?” she agreed with a wink and made her way back to the couch. The game was starting up again, and the guys shoved over without complaint to make room for her. 

Mike still couldn’t pinpoint what was different about Ginny. Her smiles tonight had been wide and frequent, her horsey laugh infectious. Maybe it was just that he’d never known her this happy. Last season she’d been so desperately struggling to adjust to the majors, to prove she belonged. There’d been trouble with her mom and her brother, and the scandal with the Nike party and the nude photos, and her break with Amelia. Then her injury. Ginny, for all her sunny smiles and razor wit, had never really settled into this life before it’d been snatched out from under her. Ever since then, she’d been clawing her way back.  

But she was back where she belonged now, with her team. Maybe not exactly where she belonged. Mike would prefer if Livan wasn’t sitting on the floor in front of her. Ginny was leaning forward, begging Gonzaga’s center to get more aggressive, and her calves were pressed against Livan’s biceps, her knees around his shoulders. 

Mike twisted off the cap and took a healthy swig of his beer. At least she hadn’t called him ‘papi’ tonight. That drove Mike nuts, and he was sure Duarte knew it. Every time she said it, Livan turned that shit-eating grin on Lawson. Sometimes he winked. Duarte was lucky he still had all his teeth. 

Midway through the second half, Mike opened the door for the next delivery guy. When the pizzas had disappeared, he’d placed an online order with a late-night cookie delivery place. Gooey chocolate and cold milk (regular and almond) went a long way toward soothing the disappointment brewing in the room as Carolina maintained control of the game. 

As the game wound down, Mike headed over to the fridge for one last beer. He’d stick around and help her clean up, so he wasn’t worried about driving yet. A few of these guys would need to use Uber, and he’d make sure everyone got home safely. They had a night game tomorrow. 

Mike shoved aside the six-pack Omar had brought, now holding only two bottles, to grab the last of the beers he’d brought back from Arizona, and noticed the soda label for the first time. Henry’s Hard Grape Soda. 4.2% alcohol.

Aw hell. No wonder Ginny was so bubbly tonight. She’d had four of these in the last two hours, plus the beer she’d been drinking before Omar arrived. She wasn’t hammered or anything, but she was definitely buzzed. Maybe slightly more than buzzed. 

And now that he knew that, it was obvious in the way she’d laughed at Dusty’s terrible jokes, in how she kept flipping off the screen every time Roy Williams came on. She hummed to herself as she started to pick up, Blip helping her until Mike asked him to make sure the guys all made it into their Ubers downstairs.

Ginny hugged each teammate as they left. Blip got the biggest hug, of course, and a promise that Ginny would come to dinner on Friday.

And then they were alone. Her condo wasn’t quite trashed, but there were discarded napkins and empty bottles on every available surface, paper plates stacked up with bits of crust and smears of sauce. Someone had picked off a pile of green peppers and left them neatly on a plate balanced on the arm of a chair.

On the screen, the Carolina Tar Heels started cutting down the nets, and Ginny plopped down on the couch. “Come here, this is my favorite part,” she urged.

Mike dropped some plates into the trash can he’d pulled out from under her sink and sat down with her for the first time all night. “This is your favorite?” he asked dubiously. It was just Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery talking.

Ginny shoved his arm playfully. “Not this, just wait.” Her tongue snaked out to lick away a dab of melted chocolate in the corner of her mouth, and Mike’s brain went to a decidedly X-rated place. She shoved him again. “This, look.”

Mike dragged his eyes away from Ginny’s mouth and back to the television screen. Oh, right. Luther Vandross, dead more than a decade now, was singing while a montage of the tournament highlights played. Ginny was singing along softly, surprisingly not terribly off-key for once. Maybe Katy Perry was just a bad choice for her. 

She shuffled around on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her, and yawned. She listed to the side a little as she settled down, her shoulder pressed against him.

“You okay there?” he asked, far too aware of the heat of her bare arm against his, the slight weight of her leaning on him.

“Yeah, just sleepy.” She yawned again, as if saying the word inspired it. 

“I bet. You do know those sodas were alcoholic, right?” 

“They were?” she asked. “Huh, that would explain it.”

“Explain what?” Did she realize how open and unguarded she’d been tonight? She hadn’t gotten sloppy or slurring or inappropriately affectionate, although she’d definitely given far more hugs than usual. 

“You stayed to keep an eye on me, instead of going down with the guys.”

Mike shook his head. “Nah, I just didn’t want to leave you with a mess.”

“I don’t have a cleaning lady,” she admitted. “I had to stash a bunch of junk in my room before you guys got here.”

Mike chuckled and turned to find her smiling at him. “What’s that look for?”

Her head ducked and she bit her lip. “I lied earlier.”

“About what?” Mike suddenly wasn’t sure staying behind had been a good idea. Ginny wasn’t so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing or saying, but her inhibitions were definitely lowered. And, well, every so often he still caught her looking at him the way she had back at Boardner’s. 

“Omar’s not my favorite,” she said, her voice a little husky. 

“It’s Blip, right? Gotta be Blip.” Mike needed to lighten the mood, because that voice was making him hot and he didn’t need alcohol to want to move his hand just a few inches to rest on her thigh.

She shook her head, fiddling with one of those curly pigtails that should make her look too young to inspire the dirty thoughts running through his head, but they didn’t. She looked like every damn dream that left him hard and hating himself in the middle of the night.

“Nope,” Ginny said, popping the ‘p.’ “You’re my favorite.”

Mike had heard that before, hundreds of times, usually outside stadiums or in dark bars, from women with red lips and exposed cleavage, their manicured nails trailing down his arm or his chest as they whispered those words. Ginny wasn’t like them. Her smile was sweetly affectionate, almost shy. She wasn’t trying to seduce him, and he wasn’t about to seduce her. Not tonight, not while they were still teammates.

So he said what he’d never wanted to with any of those women. “You’re my favorite too, rookie.”

 


End file.
